


Sic Transit Guy

by kalijean



Series: Arch to the Sky [19]
Category: due South
Genre: Arch to the Sky, Gen, Nipawin (1991-1995)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalijean/pseuds/kalijean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1991: Turnbull takes a call handling a local drunk who just happens to be his friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic Transit Guy

"I will not play this game with you, Guy. You climbed up there by yourself, you should be perfectly capable of getting yourself down."

Renfield Turnbull did not ever want to see that much of his friend, and most certainly not from this angle. The _shame_ of it. Turnbull was red-faced in second-hand humiliation; Guy hadn't the faculties to be ashamed for himself.

The nature and state of dress of this particular treed beast shouldn't have been any kind of shock. Guy had rapidly become a pain in the collective backside of his detachment and quite a lot of the town besides, and though it was Guy who had latched onto _him_ as might an extremely intoxicated barnacle, Turnbull had come to feel responsible for him.

Guy had been a decidedly odd RCMP recruit. It was a complete mystery how he'd gotten _in_ ; nobody had been shocked when he dropped out.

That should have been the end of it. Guy should have gone _home_. As Turnbull was getting an entirely new and unwelcome view of the man, he tried to remember what mistake he could possibly have made to become interesting to him. Guy followed him around because he simply hadn't anything better to _do_. It wasn't an exaggeration. When asked why, that was always Guy's cheerful, if slurred, response.

He couldn't recall. Nor could Turnbull remember when it was he finally gave in and accepted the village idiot for a liability. The man insinuated himself into _everything_ , including Turnbull's sphere of responsibility.

Guy had lost the ability to babble in full English; it was an odd mix of English, French and nothing from this planet that had contained the words "Jeanne", "ring", and a number of obscenities. Turnbull had caught snippets of some ramble about Guy's poor dead grandmother. Guy was most insistent the woman would never forgive him in the afterlife.

A car passed by in the dark, illuminating the shameful sight in two bright beams of sharp relief. The car horn blasted, distorting as the vehicle passed.

Turnbull facepalmed.

He had patience for many things. In fact this was not the first inadequately clothed debacle he'd been party to handling.

But this was _Guy_.

"You can be no more drunk now than you were when you climbed up there. Come down this _instant_."

Guy answered with an anguished groan and a mostly-empty beer bottle tossed at Turnbull's feet. Even with the snow to cushion it, it shattered.

Ah.

"...so you are. I am still not coming up there."

The burst of drunken gibberish must have indicated something, but Turnbull wasn't practiced enough in speaking Drunk to glean what.

He dropped his head, sighing out at the snow.

"I am an officer in the RCMP. I should not, shall not, _will not_ carry a half-naked grown man out of a tree like a frightened housecat! Are you not freezing? Have you no want of future generations of small Guys to drive small Turnbulls to distraction? Come down this instant, Guy Laurent, or I will shake this tree until you fall like a coconut!"

As was Turnbull's general luck, that appeared to do the trick.

There was no need for tree-shaking. Guy flung his arms to the four winds, his legs giving way from the perch. He bounced branch by branch right into Turnbull's hastily outstretched arms. Draped like the daintiest damsel in distress gone horrifically wrong.

Guy looked him straight in the baffled face, and with perfect clarity, apologized.

The force and weight of it - Guy had about ten kilos on him - had already sent Turnbull wobbling to keep standing and there was something about the apology that just threw him.

He teetered on the brink of his balance, and his foot landed just so to turn his ankle; he _timb-erred_ , spilling Guy in all his half-naked glory out into the snowdrift.

His hat spilled off, rolling away.

Another car passed. Turnbull fancied he could hear laughing in that horn blast.


End file.
